Valve lays the smack down on Half-Life 2 pirates

Half-Life 2 was rather sneakily shipped requiring online activiation. Requiring online activation makes piracy a lot trickier. Of course, how far is too far? A friend of mine was stuck trying to activate for two hours and it ultimately failed. (And this was after the initial rush.) He even debated taking the game back to the store due to this fact.

That's a debate for another time. Anyway, Valve have beaten down thousands of accounts who attempted to use Half-Life 2 illegally, or so Valve claim. The forums over at SteamPowered are, needless to say, home to quite a few rather upset people. Some claiming they've done nothing wrong. Link goes to Slashdot as the Steam forums seem a little wonky right now.